[Priest] Holy Smite DPS viability? - Page 11

l337n00b · 06/17/09, 10:50 AM

Originally Posted by ildon

The strength of tank/DPS hybrid trees can largely be controlled by "stances" and the requirement of defense rating. Look at how overpowered DK's were (and arguably continue to be) in PvP due to being able to grab defensive talents and offensive talents in the same tree so easily. Feral druids are pretty strong, too, and were bordering on overpowered when the expansion came out, but DKs/Ret paladins eclipsed them so greatly it was mostly overlooked. Warriors aren't in this position as often because it's much more costly for them to change stances (both in rage and in ability to deal/take damage).

Priests have always been on the verge of being overpowered, especially in small group PvP, due to their combination of CC, utility, and offensive output combined with their healing. The only thing that has really kept them under control is that they wear cloth armor, and that their utility spells are highly mana inefficient. Note that when Paladins got nerfed, priests immediately became the dominant healer. I believe if druids had been strongly nerfed in S3 or S4, it would have been priests that ended up on top then, too. (Well, maybe paladins again. Priests were getting owned pretty hard by warglaives/double 4pc rogues and hunters. But my point is priests were still extremely strong back then, too.)

Now take either healing tree and add in the talents required to make it do viable raid DPS. Unless they have to make some HUGE tradeoff to do that kind of damage and you're looking at an extremely overpowered PvP healer. "Holy Form" would probably not be enough. When a shadow priest drops shadowform, he has ZERO talents supporting his healing spells. If our theoretical holy/disc priest dropped holy form to heal, he would potentially have the full support of an entire healing tree behind his healing.

Can Blizzard solve this problem and make a viable DPS/Healing hybrid tree out of either Holy or Disc? I believe so. Is the design/balance effort worth the result? I don't think so. Shadow is a fun, viable, and interesting DPS playstyle. It now requires extremely minimal re-gearing to swap and do "good" DPS. And with dual specs now available another barrier of entry (respec cost) has been erased. Remember, if there was a DPS-viable version of one of the healing trees, you would still be respeccing/reglyphing between "holy dps" and "holy healing" for raids.

I agree with the basic thrust of this, that tacking on dps viability to a healing spec would be a real problem in terms of balance, but if you look at the dps builds that people are usually talking about they are spending 13+ points on talents that have no impact on their damage or the mana efficiency of pumping that damage out (and to only spend 13 on non-damage you have to take some talents that are extremely bad). Obviously you are never going to be a viable dpser that way, and if you reallocate all talent points to dps then you will not be a very good healer, so the balance issue isn't really there anymore than it is for elemental shamans.

I personally think it would be worth the design effort to support this spec. Why? Because it is clear there is a sizable community that wants to play it, and the amount of design needed is rather small (obviously I am biased because I want to play it). The solution is not to make a dps/healing hybrid tree, it is to put a few talents that boost the damage/efficiency of the smite spec in low tiers of all three trees (I'm fine with taking shadow talents to boost my holy dps spec, I'm going to be casting PW:S and DP in any event. For example, put a viable tier 1 talent in shadow for holy dps and change shadow focus to affect all your spells ala mage hit talents.) A talent that gives +100% crits and about 10 talent points that give the equivalent of +1% damage through whatever means would pretty much do it.

All of this could sound like an elemental shaman lamenting that they can't do frost damage as their main nuke, but to me the difference is that 1) there are well populated threads on priest forums everywhere discussing this, showing a wide public interest and 2) the number of changes required would be fairly minor.

Sevia · 06/27/09, 8:59 PM

I believe all they really need for Priest Holy DPS is:

1) A Teir in either Holy or Discipline that increases critical strike damage of Holy Fire and Smite.
2) Increases DOT damage of Holy Fire and/or give Holy Fire DOT a Teir that enables it the ability to critically hit.

I think that's all they'd really need. My priest has always been disc/holy for smite. Shadows boring to me.

I've seen most of the spec that people have posted on this thread and I wanted to know if mine was an okay one. I dropped Pain Suppression to get SoR for the +5% Spirit. I'm mostly PvP than PvE.

PvP: The World of Warcraft Armory

PvE: The World of Warcraft Armory

I dropped Spirit Tap in the PvE spec because I don't think it would be too useful, besides between boss encounters and unless the boss encounter has adds. So I gave it Pain Suppression. I also wouldn't think that a Disc/Holy DPS would really need the 20% Threat Reduction but I gave it 3/3 anyways. These are my specs. Is there any suggestions how I could make them better? PvE at least.

Althor · 07/25/09, 7:33 AM

Originally Posted by Sevia

I believe all they really need for Priest Holy DPS is:

1) A Teir in either Holy or Discipline that increases critical strike damage of Holy Fire and Smite.
2) Increases DOT damage of Holy Fire and/or give Holy Fire DOT a Teir that enables it the ability to critically hit.

I think that's all they'd really need. My priest has always been disc/holy for smite. Shadows boring to me.

I've seen most of the spec that people have posted on this thread and I wanted to know if mine was an okay one. I dropped Pain Suppression to get SoR for the +5% Spirit. I'm mostly PvP than PvE.

PvP: The World of Warcraft Armory

PvE: The World of Warcraft Armory

I dropped Spirit Tap in the PvE spec because I don't think it would be too useful, besides between boss encounters and unless the boss encounter has adds. So I gave it Pain Suppression. I also wouldn't think that a Disc/Holy DPS would really need the 20% Threat Reduction but I gave it 3/3 anyways. These are my specs. Is there any suggestions how I could make them better? PvE at least.

You need a lot more than increasing critical strike damage to make Holy DPS viable in PvE, but as for your question about improving your spec:

The points in Renewed Hope are wasted DPS wise. The points in Aspiration also wouldn't give much of a boost.

So long as you're casting SW:P in your rotation then you might get more of a DPS return from putting points into Darkness. Especially if you're also using Devouring Plague, Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death at all.

Starfire · 07/26/09, 5:49 AM

On the other-hand, increasing critical strike damage would go a long way towards making Holy viable for arenas. (Assuming you have enough mana). -- Actually, a change like that coupled with some method of addressing Holy's endurance would put Holy in a good place for PVP.

I think it is reasonable for there to be a deep Holy talent to increase smite (and holy fire, maybe holy nova) critical damage. Because as it stands, for any sort of leveling/farming build, you're going to go for Borrowed Time and Penance. I believe this is a valid concern as we approach "Maelstrom".

Food for thought: having Test of Faith increase holy damage on targets below 50%.

CuriousPriest · 07/27/09, 12:24 PM

Just increasing the critical strike damage will not make holy viable, the main issue is that there exists a large damage increase for shadow spells (after glyphs and talents some are above 50% damage increase), which also increases the crit damage since the 1.5X multiplier is being applied to a higher value, but oh yea shadow spells crit for double damage. So to truly be competitive, searing light would be have to be increased to a higher percentage, perhaps 12.5% per point? and, just to make sure, a "your holy spells crit for double" talent would also have to be included.

Lichdom · 09/24/09, 9:10 AM

Long time reader, first time poster.

I've been experimenting with holy dps for over a year on and off, from Kara to Ulduar. It seems to me that the most important adjustment that could be made to make holy dps more viable is to add one or more talents that grants enough hit rating to be capped or almost capped for pve.

The justification being that, the part of the community that wants holy dps to be viable isn't really trying to compete with mage or warlock dps, and if holy ever matched those, it would be sorely unbalanced. On the other hand, the real benefit I see is for this spec is to fill the very interesting role of "Half Healer." The healing requirements for WotLK raids has always been inconsistent. With the emphasis on dps requirements for many of these fights, carrying additional healers in fights where they're not needed could be crippling to some raid groups. This issue is partially addressed by the introduction of Dual-Spec, but often the extra dps requirements are needed only a for a specific "burn" phase, after which, the extra dps is inconsequential.

If holy dps could put out perhaps 70%, in a burst phase, of a full dpser's output, and still be capable of healing for the rest of the encounter, trading out some regen and healing output talents for almost hit capping holy spells, then they could have a useful reason to take up a spot in a raid, not the contrived one some of us holy dps lovers are trying to find.

As a pertinent example, I've been using a holy dps spec with some success as a portal healer/brain dpser in the Yog-Saron encounter. I do snipe flash heals in P1 and P3 to assist the other two healers, then unload on the brain in P2 with Power Infusion, Shadow fiend, etc. The damage output is decent enough, but having to carry 300+ hit rating on my gear in P1 and 3 is highly inefficient.

axeman1n · 09/26/09, 9:21 PM

I've found that Holy DPS build to be quite useful. In heroic I do about 800dps while healing. In raid I can do 2.4k using Holy Nova. I'd like to see blizz take another look at our tree and see if they can boost the less common builds. I hate having all dps priests be shadow.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

pocketmage · 10/01/09, 7:51 PM

Originally Posted by Lichdom

On the other hand, the real benefit I see is for this spec is to fill the very interesting role of "Half Healer." The healing requirements for WotLK raids has always been inconsistent. With the emphasis on dps requirements for many of these fights, carrying additional healers in fights where they're not needed could be crippling to some raid groups. This issue is partially addressed by the introduction of Dual-Spec, but often the extra dps requirements are needed only a for a specific "burn" phase, after which, the extra dps is inconsequential.

If holy dps could put out perhaps 70%, in a burst phase, of a full dpser's output, and still be capable of healing for the rest of the encounter, trading out some regen and healing output talents for almost hit capping holy spells, then they could have a useful reason to take up a spot in a raid, not the contrived one some of us holy dps lovers are trying to find.

As a pertinent example, I've been using a holy dps spec with some success as a portal healer/brain dpser in the Yog-Saron encounter. I do snipe flash heals in P1 and P3 to assist the other two healers, then unload on the brain in P2 with Power Infusion, Shadow fiend, etc. The damage output is decent enough, but having to carry 300+ hit rating on my gear in P1 and 3 is highly inefficient.

I did the same thing as you, I was mostly Disc at the time and my offspec Holy/disc build was specific tailored for Yogg and other Ulduar specifics. I had Body and Soul for speedy boosting melee, and had the smite glyph and relevant talents for dpsing the brain. It was useful for XT's heart phase as well. I was able to put out some really nice numbers for a holy priest, relative to the other healers.

I'd have to disagree with what you propose though, as your reasoning is flawed. The problem with your thought experiment is that you are forgetting that content is tuned and not a constant. If all healers, not just smite priests, were able to pump out substantially higher DPS, then easy to heal phases would have a harder burn and expect healers to be part of that burn as well. That is true already in rare occurrences, like XT's heart phase.

There would be no net change to now in regard to how quick something would be bursted down. The target's HP would be increased by whatever X% the raid's DPS is boosted by.

And I never was a big fan of half healers. If healing is light enough where 1 or 2 of your healers can do this, bring a pure DPS instead, or make him/her respec and kill the boss a little quicker. Which in turn would alleviate the increased healer mana strain.

Lichdom · 10/05/09, 2:54 PM

Originally Posted by pocketmage

If all healers, not just smite priests, were able to pump out substantially higher DPS, then easy to heal phases would have a harder burn and expect healers to be part of that burn as well. That is true already in rare occurrences, like XT's heart phase.

There would be no net change to now in regard to how quick something would be bursted down. The target's HP would be increased by whatever X% the raid's DPS is boosted by.

As I understand it, your assumption here is that if Priests are given a well designed hybrid healing/dps spec in the form of holy smite, then all other healers will be given the same option so as to not make this raid role a unique one to priests. I don't see that as a requirement.

As long as the spec is balanced correctly to make it very mana intensive to do both healing and dpsing for long (or some other throttling mechanic), then it can fill a valid role without being abused and without the expectation that burn phase requirements would go up accordingly.

As for role uniqueness, I'd cite druid tanks of a few patches ago with obscene dps output for a tank and current holy paladins with unmatched simultaneous tank+OT healing.

Sunius · 10/07/09, 2:23 AM

well, click on this link and my name =) says it all Wow Web Stats

l337n00b · 10/07/09, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by pocketmage

And I never was a big fan of half healers. If healing is light enough where 1 or 2 of your healers can do this, bring a pure DPS instead, or make him/her respec and kill the boss a little quicker. Which in turn would alleviate the increased healer mana strain.

Half halers play an important role in 10-man content. In 25-man you can choose between 3 and 7 healers as the content demands, but in 10-man you usually need 2 and probably don't want to go to 3 unless you absolutely have to. There are two fights in WotLK that we used half-healers to beat as a 10-man guild (so using mostly 10-man gear). The first was Sarth+3 drakes, where we had an elemental shaman switch to chain heal spam when two drakes were down, the second is hardmore Anub'arak where I smite dps until Leeching Swarm. In both cases the classes are exceptional. Among dps classes elemental shamans make the most servicable healers, and priests are the class most able to build solid dps talents into an otherwise healing build. The amount of healing required for both of these short sections of fights is really astounding (or in the case of Sarth, was when the content was top-tier). It's this difference is phases of fights that makes half-healers valuable. It's not that you need 2.5 healers for the whole fight, you need 2 for half the fight and 3 for the other half.

Lichdom · 10/07/09, 6:26 PM

Originally Posted by l337n00b

Half halers play an important role in 10-man content. In 25-man you can choose between 3 and 7 healers as the content demands, but in 10-man you usually need 2 and probably don't want to go to 3 unless you absolutely have to.

I completely agree with this. Many 25 man raiders marginalize the value of half healer roles, and rightfully so in 25 mans, but the truth is that in 10 man raiding, it can strike a balance that otherwise is difficult to achieve. You get the extra dps for the burn phases and the extra healing for the raid damage phases.

The reason this is relevant to smite priests obviously is for the talent issues l337n00b mentioned, and for the built in mana regen abilities that priests get. You could very reasonably blow your entire mana bar on dpsing, then regain all of it back with HoH+SF, giving you plenty of mana to heal with.

More pertinent to the thread, I've continued to test the half healer smiter spec in several raids. I'm able to burst about 3.5k dps when going full steam, which quickly drops to about 2.5k once shadow fiend and PI are down. However, I'm finding it hard to quantify the damage boost from putting up Power Infusion on our highest ranged DPS as opposed to myself. Searing Light is probably the biggest reason why I'd rather put PI on someone else. It easily eats up 1 or 2 GCDs from PI while not capitalizing on either the haste or mana reduction.

Here's the spec I'm using. The highlights are going deep enough into disc to pick up Pain Suppression, since I am a healer after all and should supply my own tanking CD. Also picking up Renewed Hope for some passive damage reduction. The rest is mostly standard fare. Obviously this is a mana hungry spec, but does surprisingly well as long as I'm careful to minimize my overhealing.

Xel2 · 10/07/09, 9:47 PM

This is my most recent attempt on number crunching Surge of Light vs. no Surge of Light.

Assumptions:

- you have enough haste to enable 1.33 global cooldown and 4 x smite in every holy fire DoT duration.
- cast duration is 272 seconds (4 and half minutes non stop)
- ignoring damage done by other spells
- hit capped, 2000 spellpower, 37/27/7 pure holy dps build

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/2585/screenshotlc.png

top table is with SoL, bottom table is not. blue represent "real time", orange represent "ideal time or pure dps"

the smite glyph has a lot of limitations, the fact that holy fire DoT runs shorter than Holy Fire cooldown creates "gaps" in between casting. During this gap, casting Smite unglyphed is inefficient, it also reduces the effectiveness of haste, since the primary advantage of a SoL smite is that you spend only 1.33 seconds casting it instead of 1.74

As you can see, in "Real Time", SoL dps is lower than non SoL dps, but that is perhaps compensated with filler spells such as SW

eath or Mindblast, since 1.74 secondsnormal smite won't allow you to squeeze those spells into your rotation.

However, if you were to assume "pure dps" calculated ignoring spell cooldown and waiting times, SoL spec will have higher dps output than non SoL build up to and until 80% crit rating.

note: spreadsheet not done with easy understanding in mind, it's just a quick sum up of what i imagine the calculation should be, some columns should be ignored as they are used to check formulas and consistency.

tedv · 10/08/09, 10:19 AM

I think people are vastly overestimating the amount of damage a healing spec priest will put out in a raid situation, even if they gimp their healing talents for damage. Here's a parse of our 25 Heroic Anub'arak kill:

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

The two discipline priests (myself and Devonn) spent almost the entirety of phases 1 and 2 doing damage. My typical rotation when burrowers were up was Shield -> Mind Sear -> Mind Sear. Because of Borrowed time (and Mind Sear being considered instant cast), this meant I got two Mind Sears with a 3 second channel time each damaging four targets. Simply put, this is the best case scenario for a healing specced priest ever doing damage in a raid. When adds were down, I did single target damage on the boss. Obviously I switched to healing penetrating cold in phase 3.

And what are the results? I did 35% less damage than the lowest tank and less than a third of the damage of our lowest DPS, a warlock in charge of handling interrupts. I dealt just over 1% of the raid's damage. And we had a spare 40 seconds on our enrage timer. It's good that I was able to deal damage because why waste a full mana bar. But you're kidding yourself if you think this has a significant impact on the fight, or that you should sacrifice any healing talents at all for improving your damage. Even doubling my damage would not be worth a 10% loss in healing output. I'm all in favor of casting smite in raids. I'm just not in favor of speccing for it.

Xel2 · 10/08/09, 1:32 PM

I think this thread is getting a little off topic. We are talking about viability of a Holy DPS spec, not how far we can stretch smite damage with a healing spec. Dual spec is now available, so no one is asking you to gimp your discipline healing numbers with damage talents.

Lichdom · 10/10/09, 12:33 AM

Originally Posted by tedv

The two discipline priests (myself and Devonn) spent almost the entirety of phases 1 and 2 doing damage. My typical rotation when burrowers were up was Shield -> Mind Sear -> Mind Sear.

I don't really see anything conclusive from your parse. You were comparing your damage output on a one to one basis against tanks and dpsers when all they did was dps the whole fight while you snuck in 1.3 mil healing. If you were fully healing for one third of the fight, the third were blood lust was probably used as well, then you have to adjust your comparison accordingly.

Also, your assertion that this is the best scenario for a holy priest doing damage because of the very convenient aoe targets available is not really accurate. That might give you a higher dps number, but as for damage done, many of your dpsers were maintaining about 35-45% of their damage from aoe as well, mostly if not completely nullifying the damage done advantage you may have gained from aoeing.

As for the actual damage done, 60% of it came from a spell that is only incidentally supported by a holy smite spec. Your miss rate indicates that you were carrying little to no hit rating. Thus it is no surprise that your damage output was lackluster.

I feel that this is a very unfair assessment of the viability of holy dps. A fairer test would be with a fully specced holy dps with a nod to healing talents wearing solid hit rating gear and focusing on single target smite dps during lull phases or burn phases in a 10 man raiding situation, where ultimately a quirky spec like this belongs.

To Xel2: It seems to me that the past 10 pages of modeling smite dps shows that it will never be competitive to Shadow, or any other full dpser for that matter. So it seems to be a natural extension to search for viability in this spec by exploring its only ace in the hole, the ability to heal better than anyone except a fully specced healer.

ildon · 10/11/09, 3:45 AM

Your initial post that bumped this thread (that most of us had hoped was finally laid to rest after 2 months of no replies) specifically talked about a healing hybrid that DPS's during a burn phase and heals during another phase. Well guess what? That's exactly what tedv demonstrated. You even said yourself holy should have had some kind of +9% hit talent, yet then try to discount his data because he wasn't hit capped. So for one fight in the game, he's going to kit out his healing gear with hit gems? Or sacrifice a ton of throughput and regen which he might actually need for phase 3 by wearing DPS gear? And you try to discount his data because he didn't have bloodlust?

What the hell is it you want? Holy/disc DPS is shit, period. Even if you add 13% on to tedv and devonn from them being hit capped, they're still below the *tanks* in DPS, and mind sear is literally the highest DPS you could expect a holy/disc to deal. If it wasn't a mind sear situation it would have been much *lower*, not higher. And as a primary *healer*, expecting him to take some DPS boosting talents or glyphs or whatever at the sacrifice of healing talents/glyphs, just for one fight in the entire raid, is idiotic.

There is no "ace in the hole" to be simultaneously a shitty healer and a shitty DPS. That just makes you a shitty person to have in the raid. Being a great healer and a shitty DPSer is pretty decent, however. I'm no stranger to smiting the last 5 seconds of a boss for a first kill with a rogue evasion tanking (hello 10 man Firefighter), but that doesn't make me suddenly think we would have gotten the kill if I was doing 10% worse healing or had 10% worse regen, but 10% better damage. More likely either someone who can do a lot more DPS would have died earlier or I would have been OOM earlier and we would not have gotten the kill at all.

StormyParis · 10/12/09, 3:38 AM

I have two priests, a throwback to the days when you needed 2 to play Heal or DPS. My main one is a pure healer, with PVE-Disc and PVE-Holy specs. My other one, I use more as a testing toon.

I don't like Shadow's gameplay much: hard to play, too many CDs, lackluster DPS, and, come on, mandatory pefect clipping for so-so DPS ? So I've tried like hell to make Holynuker work. Back in BC, I managed to be somewhat good up to and including heroics, but couldn't really hack Karazhan: longer boss fights = OOM, DPS not really scaling with gear...

I've tried Holynuker again in WOTLK. As a pexxing spec, it's very good, and I much prefer it to Shadow. I was doing 700-800k xp/hr with a blue XP bar, mowing down swathes of mobs, and healing the occasional instance with no problem. As a raiding spec, it sucks even worse than before. DPS is not competitive at all, Healing suffers too much from glyphing/talenting/gemming for DPS. The new fights also require Healers to be really on the ball, which I personnaly can't manage if I'm trying to DPS at the same time.

The best I could advise you to do is, if your second spec is available, do holynuker as a second spec, get +hit a weapon and trinkets/rings, and go pretend you're a DPS on the raid bosses that don't require many healers and on which you wouldn't have much to do anyway. That way, you don't waste too much gear on that spec, you don't mess up the gems and enchants of your truely useful spec, and you get to have your fun... when nobody minds.

Tardmasterg · 10/12/09, 5:08 AM

Originally Posted by axeman1n

I've found that Holy DPS build to be quite useful. In heroic I do about 800dps while healing. In raid I can do 2.4k using Holy Nova. I'd like to see blizz take another look at our tree and see if they can boost the less common builds. I hate having all dps priests be shadow.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I don't know if we'll ever see a Disc or Holy spec become a DPS class like shadow. Mainly because those are two healing specs. Even at this point, I hate seeing classes that can DPS as much as they can HPS. So running into a Holy Priest that can push out 4k dps as long as heal himself for large amounts would be chaotic and I think you'd see a lot of complaints about it.

tedv · 10/12/09, 12:46 PM

Believe it or not, I actually wore some hit gear on that parse, but I made no attempt to be capped. I just tried to swap out lower ilvl pieces with stats that were terrible for discipline (read: spirit) for a little bit of hit rating.

Ardourdan · 10/27/09, 12:15 PM

Deleted

Ardourdan · 10/27/09, 12:20 PM

Scrap the above post - 4k is doable. Used a dummy being targeted by every sod going and I was at 4k. Fully raid buffed I reckon 4.5k is viable.

tedv · 10/27/09, 12:45 PM

Well shadow priests are being benched for "only" doing 6k to 6.5k. I don't see how doing 25% less damage than that justifies the raid slot. Can we kill this idea once and for all? Holy Paladins don't talk about holy shock builds. Resto Shaman don't try to spam lightning bolts. And Tree druids don't spam moonfire. I don't see why Holy priests should want to spam smites.

Mearis · 10/27/09, 1:05 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

Well shadow priests are being benched for "only" doing 6k to 6.5k. I don't see how doing 25% less damage than that justifies the raid slot. Can we kill this idea once and for all? Holy Paladins don't talk about holy shock builds. Resto Shaman don't try to spam lightning bolts. And Tree druids don't spam moonfire. I don't see why Holy priests should want to spam smites.

Well, elemental shamans have to deal with every unique snowflower proposing their dual wield elemental build that abuses two spell power weapons, or the dual wield resto builds. I suppose trees have the people proposing restokin builds seriously?

This thread should be deleted though, you can probably heal all easy mode content with a smite spec easily enough, but the spec is not designed to do competitive DPS, and Blizzard has not indicated that they intend to support a 'battle-priest' type spec. The closest thing to a hybrid nuker-healer spec that you will find is a smite-spec'd priest in arenas, playing with a mage.

thebitterfig · 10/28/09, 1:50 AM

The appeal of a Smite build is twofold. First, it is a lot of fun for leveling. You make things go boom rather than dot them and wait for them to die, and you can heal in combat without the inconvenience of going back to Shadow. Second, unlike DW caster shaman (which really just cast the same spells but want two caster weapons), your spells are different and there is a different feel to Smite. Instead of weaving dots and cooldowns with filler when you can, you spam nukes and dot from time to time. Restokin and Shockadin have a few spells different from the proper specs, but restokin will still be a mostly hot-based healer, and Shockadin will play almost identically to ret but with different spell names. Smite nuking builds are almost as different from Shadow as the variations between warlocks specs.

In no way will theorycrafting Disc/Holy dps ever be the same as standard EJ theorycrafting. One is tuning a sportscar, the other is futzing with the old beaten down junker in the back yard to see if it will run. I'm defending it, but I don't know if I'm defending it *for here*. It really doesn't belong in the same category as everything else here, but there doesn't seem to be any convenient place to discuss "the best of a bad spec." To the extent that theorycrafting can in itself be a fun hobby, there is room for semi-quackery and oddballs. This isn't the place because it really, really isn't viable for the relevant raids (if want to spec Smite and pug Naxx for fun, cool. You don't need EJ to do that.), but it would be good if there was a place somewhere.